With Mixed Feelings, D.c. Says Goodbye To Newest Landmark

January 17, 2000|By Francis X. Clines, New York Times News Service.

WASHINGTON — A year ago, the impeachment trial of President Clinton was burning up this city with the question of whether a citizen named Monica Lewinsky would be called to tell all before the Senate and the nation. Precisely a year later, the capital has slipped into a welcome lame-duck doze in which the strongest issue in sight is whether the restoration scaffolding surrounding the Washington Monument has proved to be a more glorious attraction than the monument itself.

"I did rather like the appearance of it--that high-tech look, all cobalt and white," said Tony Blankley, a ranking media pundit, in fondly dismissing proposals that the scaffolding never be taken down, but retained like a diaphanous glove showcasing the monument.

"It's a great look, but of course it must come down," said Blankley, ever the traditionalist. His point is being well-taken by a work crew that is about to dismantle the silver-aluminum scaffolding that is decoratively trimmed in dark-blue polyester mesh.

For the past 18 months, the scaffolding, created by the architect Michael Graves, has delighted the city as an entirely free-standing structure, a lacy workplace unattached to the monument that served to elegantly mime and highlight the shape of the 555-foot obelisk.

"Personally, I'd rather see the monument," said Jeff Kimsey from Cleveland, Tenn., one of the many tourists disappointed that the monument, with its aerial view of the city, has been closed during the restoration for masonry and elevator repairs.

"I thought this structure was just a part of the millennium fireworks," he said, eying the scaffolding as its gauzy mesh highlights were being removed from the tubular girders.

The cause of sparing the airily pleasing structure, whose night lighting created what seemed an alabaster glow from the monument's interior, has been carried forth on a Web page, of course. "The obelisk, it turns out, is sort of boring," concluded Chad Allen on www.keepitcovered.org.

"Join the cover-up," he pleaded.

As it turns out, one of the chief underwriters of the monument restoration, Target Stores, is already working to resurrect the scaffolding at half its current size, scaled down for a park site near the Minneapolis Institute of Art.

"We were delighted to be part of a process that brought something artistic to Washington and now we hope to keep it alive out here," said Jim Hale, a senior vice president for Target Stores, said by phone from Target's headquarters in Minneapolis. There, the founding Dayton family of the merchant chain has long prescribed that the corporation donate 5 percent of its pretax income to assorted community projects. Reconfiguring the monument scaffolding at half-size is already being negotiated with Universal Builders Supply, which built and owns the 575-foot workers' filigree.

"Well that's a cool idea, keeping the thing alive," said Andrea Kimsey, touring here with her husband. "Have a piece of this out there for people who can't get here."

The scaffolding resembles a towering glass container for the monument. Among the attributes that Washington denizens have been most celebrating is the sheer, spin-free innocence of its statement in such a political city of now you see it, now you don't. It seemed part beacon, part exclamation point for moving on from troubles past.

"It's a delight," said Peter B. Kovler, who, as one of the founding sponsors of the highly popular Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial, knows well the risks here in monumental architecture. "My hat's off to the people who managed to put aesthetics into something practical in this city."

"Everybody's a critic," he said. Indeed, at the Roosevelt Memorial on the east bank of the Potomac River, Kovler's family charity is putting up $1 million to deal with a running complaint. Robert Graham, in conjunction with the National Organization on Disabilities, has been commissioned to create a sculpted rendering of Roosevelt in his wheelchair.

Critics have complained that the true Roosevelt, the leader who triumphed from a wheelchair, was not fully on display. Visitors had to search for the sight of a small caster wheel nearly hidden in the backdrop of one Roosevelt tableau. The new sculpture, with wheels as bold as Roosevelt, will be at the entrance to the memorial.